an eye to the common peace, by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the people or Army.  But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account:  viz, that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very honestly may.  For my own part, I can say that I believe God was present in many of your administrations before you were last interrupted [i.e. before his Father’s dissolution of them in April 1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of peace. ....  Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as verbal, satisfied me also in that frame.  And, whereas my Father (whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of these Nations’ freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis.  And, as I cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late Father’s honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died.”  Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells then living draw down the family flag.  He was in London on the 4th of July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish affairs, and then that “Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own occasions.”  The same day there was an arrangement for paying the mourning expenses of Cromwell’s funeral; and on the 16th the subject of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed.  His debts, as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the understanding that his income should receive such an increase as should raise it to L10,000 a year in all.—­Monk, Lockhart, and the Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the Baltic Fleet to his will.  Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly.  He received credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.[1]